With places like McDonald’s, KFC and Burger King becoming as ubiquitous as supermarkets, it is no surprise that obesity and high blood pressure have become critical adversaries for companies all over the world to attack.

And, here in America, these health issues as well as other chronic diseases are running rampant which has charged companies with finding ways to improve patient care and monitoring, particularly in the home.

“Everybody agrees with what the problems are the thing is we can’t make people have better diets or make people exercise more, but we can do some things and that’s where wireless telehealth comes in,” Henry Rosen, vice president of M2M Business Solutions, said during today’s M2M Evolution session titled “The Evolution of Remote Monitoring and M2M Solutions for the Healthcare Industry.” “One of the things we can do is we can help with the management of chronic disease with remote patient monitoring.”

This week at ITEXPO East 2012, taking place in Miami, Fla., some of the leading industry experts in the M2M space are heading East to attend M2M Evolution to discuss how real life M2M technologies and applications are helping businesses fuel growth and productivity. This morning, Rosen took a stab at explaining to a standing room only crowd the problems surrounding healthcare today and how M2M can help. 

If you look at the crux of the issue surrounding exponentially high healthcare costs, it has to do with the rise of chronic diseases such as congestive heart failure and diabetes, for example. According to Rosen, 90 percent of all U.S. healthcare spending goes towards managing these chronic diseases.

And no matter if you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent, there is one thing you will most likely agree on, said Rosen – “our spending on healthcare is ridiculous.”

“It goes up and up,” he said, noting that in 1980 17.4 percent of U.S. spending was on healthcare whereas now that number topples 20 percent. What’s perhaps most staggering though, is how high those numbers are when compared with rest of the world.

One way to tackle the rising healthcare costs is to propel forward remote patient monitoring which not only improves the quality of a patient’s life but helps the country reduce its healthcare spending as well.

“This is really important for our country,” Rosen said. “If we can get remote patient monitoring off the ground and really humming as a standard of care in the United States, I think it’s a very important thing from a public policy point of view.”

“We have a great chance to do something about this; there is tremendous opportunity here,” he added.

Telehealth is quickly gaining in its popularity thanks to the advances made in the M2M space. Specifically, telehealth has taken on a whole language of its own, holding its own against other big name tech trends like VoIP and SIP.  According to Rosen, a successful telehealth initiative must solve many issues and every M2M solution must have three things: Device, Network and Application (DNA).

While remote monitoring might seem like a new trend, it is in fact something that has been happening for the past decade. For example, things like diabetes monitors, which are wired applications, have been used for years. The novelty of remote monitoring now is that it’s dealing with the wireless world.

Although case studies have been made for remote health monitoring, and the benefits seem obvious to many, there is still a ways to go before we will see widespread adoption, Rosen said.

“Wireless medical devices could be revolutionary but as most of us in the M2M business know, this seems to get adoption at a snail’s pace,” Rosen said. “The trouble is getting people to accept it; cost is an issue.”

M2M Evolution will continue this week until Feb. 3 in Room A107. Come join us and hear more about healthcare and M2M technologies!

Want to learn more about M2M technologies? Then be sure to check out the M2M Evolution Conference, collocated with TMC’s ITEXPO East 2012 happening now, in Miami, FL. The M2M Evolution Conference is for industry professionals interested in capitalizing on a rapidly growing segment of the telecom industry. The M2M Evolution Conference embraces the any-to-any strategy of the Internet today. Co-sponsored by TMC (News - Alert) Partner Crossfire Media, it showcases the solutions, and examines the data strategies and technological requirements that enterprises and carriers need to capitalize on a market segment that is estimated to grow to $300 Billion in the year ahead. For more information on registering for the M2M Evolution Conference click here.

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